How do we regulate ourselves?

How do we feel better, how do we continue to fill up our emotional cup (that is drained daily by life’s challenges) so we can better withstand the ups and downs of life?

We talked about awareness of our own emotional state (nervous system map) in previous posts so now once we have more awareness, we can bring things into our to daily life to ensure our emotional cup has a constant drip to ensure it can sustain the constant drain.

Awareness allows us to break our habitual patterns so that we can DO something different to the coping patterns we have always followed.

Some tips below to help regulate:

Breathing – lets activate the vagus nerve (our pathway to GREEN) by breathing with rhythm and intent. Every hour do 1 minute of breath work – breathing in for 4 (SLOWLY through your nose) and out for 6 (SLOWLY). Breathing out for longer slows your heath rate and resilience to stress.

Movement – every day engaging in physical activity – it helps with regulation and stress reduction and overall body health.

“The only way to move from these super-high anxiety states, to calmer more cognitive states, is rhythm,” Bruce Perry “Patterned, repetitive rhythmic activity: walking, running, dancing, singing, repetitive meditative breathing”.

Other ideas:

Everyday put music on whilst getting through the morning routine – helps to regulate everyone in the house…. Sing and dance if a good song comes on.

▫️Walk, swim, run for 15 minutes per day

▫️Whilst at work or sitting in the car, try the breathing exercise above.

▫️Get a massage once per month

▫️Use essential oils in a bath or in a diffuser

▫️Good sleep hygiene – aim for 6-8 hours of sleep per night.

▫️Make a cuppa and give yourself permission to enjoy it until you have finished the cup (sit on the front lawn and notice what you see, smell, what it tastes like).

IMPORTANT: try to bring one or two of these into your daily routine and structure so that you are always doing a little ‘cup filling’ and provides you with the extra you need when life is hard. Also builds resilience – the ability to cope with life’s stresses….

Tune in for the next post:
A regulated parent is much better able to regulate a dyregulated child… a dyregulated parent can never regulate a dysregulated child.